Well, it looks like I’ll be blogging more over at jonyang.org now than here. It’s been a fun run, but I’ve got a million blogs and the theme of the day is “consolidation” so I’d like to keep everything on one blog. So head on over there for a treasure trove of information — blog and non-blog related. Thanks guys!

By getting your name out there, people will start to follow your work. You want to write about ketchup versus mustard, the dog whisperer, and what’s flawed about the Ivy League admission system? You also want to get people to read all the above? Then be Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink” but also renowned writer and media critic. Gladwell has branded himself so that his name is bigger than his work, which means that people will want Malcolm for everything because he has name recognition (as well as skills).

Freelance a lot, brand yourself, and get pseudo-famous; it’s the dream of every small town girl.

A few interesting articles:
How to become a Freelance Blogger
Blogging is Easy Money, Right?

Of course, anything to be done should be done half-assed so I only have the audio and not the video/audio synced together.

If you want to, as you’re listening to the soothing sounds of my verbal stumbling around a television set (I inserted some beats so you can jam or work out to “my track”), you can imagine me using lots of hand gestures and doing weird things with my hands. That’s apparently what I do when I’m speaking in public; I gesticulate.

I have no idea why my voice dropped two octaves. Television adds ten pounds and makes girly men sound like they have deeper voices apparently. Enjoy.

Freelance Switch is for a resource for freelancers of all types and it’s got easy to read content and a nice community around it. Check it out.

I’ll be sitting on one panel (as Lilly’s sidekick) and moderating another. Should be fun. Visit the alma mater, eat some Pizza House, Rendezvous at the bar around two, go buy some Steve & Barry’s to dust off that school spirit. Um, Go Blue?

Reading in Mixed Media - Saturday, May 19th
Moderator: Jonathan Yang, Rough Guide to Blogging
Matt Bell, writer/blogger
Doreen Lichtman, Survival From Malice
Claudia Mair Burney, Murder, Mayhem and a Fine Man
Meghan O’Rourke, www.salon.com, Slate.com

The world of writing and reading is changing quickly. Join this panel as they discuss how they have addressed this changing world as writers. From blogging, to making books or excerpts of books available online or as ebook downloads, this group is facing the challenges of a changing literary world head on.

The Writer-Agent Relationship - Friday, May 18th
Lilly Ghahramani, Full Circle Literary Agency with author Jon Yang, The Rough Guide to Blogging; Amy Williams, McCormick-Williams Literary Agency and Travis Holland, The Archivist’s Story.

The author-agent relationship is crucial to publishing success. An agent will work for you in getting the best publication deal, and will support you through the publishing process. But how do you find the right agent? And how do you get that agent to notice your work in all the piles of manuscripts they receive each day?

Two pairs of authors and agents will discuss how they came to know each other, how they work together to be effective, and what expectations they should have of each other.

Come on out, Michigan is only a hop and a skip away!

“You can use an image from elsewhere on the Web without copying it to your server. Simply find the address of the individual image (not the page it’s displayed on) and use the IMG tag in the usual way.

Before posting an image on your blog, however, it’s best to ask for permission from the copyright holder. In reality, nothing is likely to happen to you for using an image without permission - especially in the case of celebrity photos and other commonly circulated stock photos - but at the very least it’s polite to ask before using, say, a drawing from an artist’s website.”

As Dave pointed out, that’s “hotlinking” and definitely not kosher for bloggers. I wrote him back and explained that he was definitely right; you should definitely ask permission to re-post images from another blogger and then host the image yourself.

Thanks for pointing that out Dave!

And here’s an important article from Aviva Directory that you should probably read: “12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know.” Included in the twelve? Whether to Disclose Paid Posts, The Legal Use of Images and Thumbnails, Domain Name Trademark Issues, Laws that Protect You From Stolen Content, and of course, Is Deep Linking Legal?

The article names themselves are super enticing: Declaring War on Blogger Apathy; Do You Have What It Takes to be a Professional Blogger?; 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity…

Feel free to order a few copies online or offline; it’s a tremendous work of achievement. Two thumbs up! It’s the prettiest/easiest/and most entertaining blog book out there. The Bay/Bruckheimer of blogging books. Plus, it’s informative.

Everyone always compliments me on the design. I just wink at them and say “And yeah, that’s not me on the cover.”

Thanks for buying. Now keep a copy on your shelf when I visit you so I don’t have to sit around special ordering my own damn book just to get copy.

Blogging 101
Thursday, April 5, 2007 — 7 pm
Saratoga Library (a Santa Clara County Library)
13650 Saratoga Avenue
Saratoga, CA 95070
408.867.6126
(click here for additional info)

Wait, this kind of sounds like MySpace — or what MySpace used to be — doesn’t it? Good luck aspiring musicians! You guys should have blogs anyway so posting your stuff to SonyBMG shouldn’t be too hard. And think of all the postage and handling you’ll save. Let’s hope other businesses will soon follow suit; incorporating digital formats and blogs into the old way of doing things.